Like as the Day his Course doth consume, And the new Morrow springeth again as fast; So Man and Woman by Natures custom This Life do pass; at last in Earth are cast, In Joy and Sorrow, which here their Time do wast, Never in one state, but in course transitory, So full of change is of the World the Glory.

Dr. Fuller observeth, That none hath worse Poetry than Poets on their Monuments; certainly there is no Rule without Exceptions; he himself instancing to the contrary in his England’s Worthies, by Mr. Drayton’s Epitaph, and several others.

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JOHN SKELTON.

John Skelton, the Poet Laureat in his Age, tho’ now accounted only a Rhymer, is supposed to have been born in Norfolke, there being an ancient Family of that Name therein; and to make it the more probable, he himself was Beneficed therein at Dis in that County.  That he was Learned, we need go no further than to Erasmus for a Testimony; who, in his Letter to King Henry the Eighth, stileth him, Britanicarum Literarum Lumen & Decus.  Indeed he had Scholarship enough, and Wit too much:  Ejus Sermo (saith Pitz.) salsus in mordacem, risus in opprobrium, jocus in amaritudinem.  Whoso reads him, will find he hath a miserable, loose, rambling Style, and galloping measure of Verse:  yet were good poets so scarce in his Age, that he had the good fortune to be chosen Poet Laureat, as he stiles himself in his Works, The Kings Orator, and Poet Laureat.

His chief Works, as many as can be collected, and that out of an old Printed Book, are these; Philip Sparrow, Speak Parrot, The Death of King Edward the Fourth, A Treatise of the Scots, Ware the Hawk, The Tunning of Elianer Rumpkin:  In many of which, following the humor of the ancientest of our Modern Poets, he takes a Poetical Liberty of being Satyrical upon the Clergy, as brought him under the Lash of Cardinal Woolsey, who so persecuted him, that he was forced to take Sanctuary at Westminster, where Abbot Islip used him with much respect.  In this Restraint he died, June 21, 1529. and was buried in St. Margaret’s Chappel, with this Epitaph;

  J.  Sceltanus Vates Pierius hic situs est.

We must not forget, how being charg’d by some on his Death-bed for begetting many Children on a Concubine which he kept, he protested, that in his Conscience he kept her in the notion of a Wife, though such his cowardliness, that he would rather confess Adultery, than own Marriage, the most punishable at that time.

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WILLIAM LILLIE.